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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



LINCOLN: 
THE MAN OF SORROW 



By EUGENE W. CHAFIN, LL. B. 

OF THE CHICAGO BAR 



"The field of history is so vast that the student derives 
his completest instruction from biographies." 

— Cushman K. Davis. 



Publiflked by 

LINCOLN TEMPERANCE PRESS 

92 La Salle Street 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
1908 



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Copyright 1908. 
By Eugkni W. Chafin 



CONTENTS 

Lecture — "Lincoln: The Man of Sorrow" 7 

appendix 

Lincoln's Temperance Speech - - 49 

First Inaugural Address - - - 69 

Second Inaugural Address - - 88 

Emancipation Proclamation - - 92 

The Gettysburg Address - - 96 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 



A LECTURE BY EUGENE W. CHAFIN, 

Delivered in "The Temple Lecture Course," in Ebenezer M. E. 

Church, Philadelphia, Pa., February 25, 1907 ^ 



We are pleased to meet such a large and 
enthusiastic audience tonight. I have not 
been in Philadelphia since the Centennial 
was held here in 1876 until today. I am glad 
to be here again. 

Most people are interested in American 
history. All ought to be. We are becoming 
students of history more and more every day. 
The great problem is how to study it. I be- 
lieve we should burn all the school histories 
of today. It has become so large a subject 
that we cannot teach it in the schools 
through the ordinary school book. 

The only way we can truly study history is 
through biography; by reading the lives of 
great men. All the important events in his- 

^Reported by Geo. O. Swartz, stenographer, Camden, N. 
J.; Rev. R. E. Johnson, pastor, presiding; music by the King's 
Daughters' quartet, of Streator, 111. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 



tory surround the lives of great men, and if 
we would teach the children in the school 
and in the home early in life to read of the 
great men of the past, we would not only 
teach them history, but it would cultivate a 
liking for it so they would go on in later 
years studying and becoming familiar with 
the facts which have made us the great 
Nation we are. 

The only trouble with this method is that 
we have so little good biography. It is only 
within twenty or thirty years that we have 
been getting what we may call fairly good 
biography. 

Washington has been dead more than one 
hundred years, and many biographies have 
been written, but a good, first-class life of 
Washington has not yet been published. I 
have over one hundred and fifty volumes of 
Washingtoniana in my library, and can see 
they are getting better each year. We may 
expect to get a first-class life of Washington 
before many years. 

If that be true, what shall we say in rela- 
tion to Abraham Lincoln ? He has been dead 
over forty years, and there has been no good, 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 



true, first-class life of Lincoln yet written, 
and none of you will live long enough to see 
such a life published. We cannot get away 
from our prejudices. We are too close to 
some of these great characters in history to 
tell the whole truth about them. 

Lincoln is the most difficult character in 
all history to understand. Tonight I wish 
to emphasize the moral of his life, rather than 
its history. I intend to take up this one 
phase of his life and see if we can get a little 
closer to this great man — the greatest char- 
acter not only in the history of the United 
States, but in the history of the world in the 
nineteenth century. The hardest character 
to comprehend in all history. That is why 
no good biography of him has been written. 
No man has yet seemed to comprehend him. 

There is one thing certain if we are going 
to try to fathom Lincoln we must trace the 
hand of God in his life, and those who study 
the life of Abraham Lincoln and see not the 
hand of God in it, study it to no purpose. 

I am going to speak of that phase of his 
life and character entitled "Lincoln, the Man 
of Sorrow,'' and am going to liken him in 



10 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

some respects to the ''Man of many Sor- 
rows" — Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
For what our Lord and Saviour is to Divine 
history Abraham Lincoln is to American his- 
tory. One was the Saviour of the World, 
the other a saviour of a Nation and a race. 

Lincoln was born in a degradation very 
far below respectable poverty, in the State of 
Kentucky/ and lived in that poverty the 
whole of his childhood. When he was in his 
eighth year the family removed to the State 
oi Indiana; before he was ten years of age 
his mother died — the first great crushing 
grief and sorrow of this boy. When he was 
about nineteen his only sister died under 
very distressing circumstances. Up to the 
time he was twenty-one years of age he had 
seen little of real Christian civilization. 
No joy or pleasure of childhood had entered 
into the life of Abraham Lincoln. He had 
lived in the back woods, not only in a log 
cabin but in a log hovel, not very much of 
clothing, only a year's schooling. 

Thomas Lincoln was an ignorant, worth- 

^Abraham Lincoln was born Sunday morning, February 
12, 1809, in Hardin (now LaRue) County, Kentucky, three 
miles from Hodgensville. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 11 

less, shiftless, illiterate man, and thought it 
a waste of time for young Abraham to learn 
to read and write, as he could do neither — 
his mother could read but probably not 
write. There never were any cords of love 
and sympathy between Thomas Lincoln and 
Abraham and he treated the boy with great 
cruelty/ When he was grown into manhood, 
he always wanted to get away from the 
thought of his childhood. There was no 
day in this child's life which brought him 
happiness, and I say to you, my dear friends, 
no matter what else you do in this world 
give children happiness. A happy day for 
a boy or girl means a thousand days, as they 
live it over and over again as the years go by. 
Such was not for Abraham Lincoln. He had 
not a day in his childhood that he wanted to 
live over again. Undoubtedly that had a 
great deal to do with his melancholy dispo- 
sition. He was not the jovial, jolly man that 
some of you think he was. He was the most 
melancholy of men. He had the blues most 
of the time. He was either clear down or 
clear up. His genius for telling stories was 

^Thomas Lincoln died in Coles County, Illinois, in 1851. 



12 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 

the safety valve that saved his life. It lifted 
him up, he laughed and made others laugh. 
His life was either a comedy or a tragedy 
most of the time. 

When he was twenty-one years of age he 
removed with the family to the State of Il- 
linois and leaving the parental home, went 
to the village of New Salem in that State, a 
place of about fifteen log houses. 

He lived there about seven years, and soon 
after he left, the village went out of existence 
and a new town was started near there call- 
ed Petersburg. It was in that little log village 
that Lincoln discovered himself. He went to 
work as an ordinary laborer, then in a store, 
and finally bought the store and with his 
partner ran it a few months and failed, leav- 
ing a large debt on his hands which it took 
him years to pay. While he was living there 
he made the acquaintance of a beautiful and 
cultured young lady by the name of Ann 
Rutledge, and they were engaged to be mar- 
ried. It was his first contact with real Chris- 
tian civilization. She taught him grammar 
and to study the Bible and Shakespeare. Two 
books that all young people should read 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 13 

every day. Lincoln's familiarity with them 
had largely to do with his literary style 
which is a combination of both. His first 
earthly joy seemed at last to be within his 
grasp, but a few months before the}^ were to 
be married she died.^ 

While I was in Petersburg near his old 
home last year on the 12th of February, to 
deliver this address, I went to the little cem- 
etery on the hill and the sexton pointed out 
a neglected grave with a little headstone 
upon which was simply the name Ann Rut- 
ledge,^ and as I stood there with uncovered 
head, I said in that grave was buried the 
heart of Abraham Lincoln. Her death so 
worked on his mind that his friends feared 
he would commit suicide. In a few months 
he went about his work again, but never re- 
covered from that great sorrow. 

He was elected to the legislature of Illi- 

^Miss Rutledge died Aug. 25, 1835, of typhoid fever. 

'Beautiful Oakland Cemetery is about half a mile from the 
city of Petersburg, 111. The headstone is a rough boulder 
about two f&et in diameter taken from the roadside, with the 
name "Ann Rutledge" rudely chiseled upon a level place. 
The entire cost probably did not exceed one dollar. It is 
in marked contrast to the beautiful and expensive monuments 
to the rich surrounding it. Withal there seems to be a fit- 
ness about it for this Lincolnian simplicity suggests. 

"The short and simple annals of the poor," 



14 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

nois, served four terms^ and distinguished 
himself for nothing. He went out of the leg- 
islature with practically nothing to his credit 
as a statesman. 

The four legislatures of which he was a 
member gave us the most vicious legislation 
in the history of the State of Illinois. 

While a member of the legislature he re- 
moved to Springfield, April 15, 1837, which 
was in his district, and began the practice of 
law, having been admitted to the bar in 1836, 
was fairly successful, and it was the only suc- 
cess he attained anywhere up to the Presi- 
dency. Soon after removing to Springfield 
he made the acquaintance of Miss Mary 
Todd, whom he afterward married. He 
courted her for several years, and on the 
first day appointed for their marriage Mr. 
Lincoln did not appear, and of course there 
was no wedding." Lincoln's conscience 

'He was elected in the years 1834, 1836, 1838 and 1840. 

^The day fixed for the marriage was Jan. 1, 1841. Lin- 
coln expresses his feelings to John T. Stuart, then in Wash- 
ington, in a letter written at Springfield, January 23, 1841, 
as follows : 

"For not giving you a general summary of news, you 
must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now 
the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 15 

would not quite allow him to marry her, and 
he could not face it, and he did not, and ran 
away from it. About a year and ten months 
afterwards their friends entered into diplo- 
matic negotiations and got them to speak- 
ing together, and one Thursday they agreed 
to be married and they were married the 
next day, Friday, Nov. 4, 1842. Now ordi- 
narily the period of courtship and engage- 
ment is the happiest period of one's life ex- 
cept that which is followed by happy mar- 
riage. 

Not so with Lincoln. They were not hap- 
py days. His first love was Ann Rutledge 
and he doubted whether he ought to marry 
another. The days he courted Miss Todd 
were among the most unhappy of his life — 
except after he got her. She was bright, 
finely educated, could speak French as well 

distributed to the whole human family there would not be 
one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be 
better I canno.t tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To re- 
main as I am is im.possible; I must die or be better it ap- 
pears to me. The matter you speak of on my account you 
may attend to as you say, unless you shall hear of my con- 
dition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be 
unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene 
might help me. If I could be myself I would rather remain 
at home with Judge Logan. I can write no more." 



16 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

as English, aristocratic, haughty, her ambi- 
tion colossal, and wanted to shine in society, 
and was one of the ugliest women in Illinois. 
There is only one State in the Nation where 
you can arrest a woman for being a ''com- 
mon scold." That is New Jersey, and it was 
a good thing she did not live there. This 
is not a pleasant thing to speak of in a lec- 
ture, and none of his biographers have said 
much about her. I would not speak of it to- 
night only that it is necessary for us to know 
everything about this man. Everything that 
occurred in his life. We want to see what 
made him the great character that he was 
in our history. In order to do that we must 
know everything that entered into his life. 
He was President of the United States which 
made her Mistress of the White House and 
therefore I have a right to tell the truth 
about Mrs. Lincoln. To illustrate how they 
enjoyed married life, he came home one day 
very tired. He laid himself on the couch, and 
she started as we say out West, ''blazing 
away'* at him. One of the neighbors came 
in and said to him, "Why don't you jaw back 
Abe?'' He said, "That did Mary a great 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 17 

deal of good and did me no harm." He was 
a philosopher. Decided to take her for bet- 
ter or for worse. 

His married life was not a congenial one 
from the beginning to the end. No happi- 
ness could come to Lincoln from any source. 

They 'had four children.^ One died in in- 
fancy and one died in the White House 
when the great Civil War was on the heart 
of this man and he was brought down almost 
to the point of being crushed by the death 
of ''Little Willie.'' It was almost more than 
he could stand. But you must understand 
that the death of Ann Rutledge brought him 
nearer to God. From that time on Lincoln 
was a student of the Bible. The great crush- 
ing blow of the death of 'Tittle Willie" 
brought him still nearer to God and I do not 

^Robert Todd Lincoln, still living and resides in Chicago, 
born August 1, 1843. 

Edward Baker Lincoln, born March 10, 1846, died in in- 
fancy. 

William Wallace Lincoln, born Dec. 21, 1850, died in the 
White House February 20, 1862. 

Thomas (Tad) Lincoln, born April 4, 1853, died in Chica- 
go July 15, 1871. 

Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln died Sunday evening, July 16, 
1882, at the residence of her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, 
in the house where she had been married November 4, 1842, to 
Abraham Lincoln. 



18 LINCOLN : TflE MAN OF SORROW 

think any man can say from that period 
Abraham Lincoln was not a devout Chris- 
tian. 

These crushing blows of great grief in the 
lives of men sometimes bring out the best 
there is in them, if they are able to overcome 
and rise above them as Lincoln was able to 
do. These sorrows kept him close to the 
common people. They just seemed to have 
to come to this man's life to bring out the 
best there was in him. Thereafter he had a 
deeper sympathy for the parents who had 
sons in the army and none appealed to him 
in vain to save them if it were possible. 

In 1846 Lincoln was elected to Congress. 
All of his campaigns were conducted with 
great bitterness against him. This one when 
he ran for Congress was the least bitter of 
any of them. He ran against Rev. Peter 
Cartwright, the great preacher. He had been 
there only a few months before he made a 
speech against the Mexican War. This 
caused his defeat for re-nomination. If you 
have read many lives of Lincoln you have 
found that there is not a biographer who tells 
the truth about this matter. Every one says 
he declined a re-election. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 19 

Oh, will the time ever come in this coun- 
try when the biographers will tell the truth. 
Let us have the truth about these great men. 
It is marvelous how people like to stick to 
some old lie. That George Washington 
cherry tree and hatchet story will illustrate 
this point. 

I said in my lecture on "Washington as a 
Statesman/' at one of our Chautauquas last 
summer, that the story about the cherry tree 
was a pure fabrication.' There never was 
a word of truth in it. After the lecture a Sab- 
bath school teacher came to me and said, 
"Mr. Chafin I hope you will never tell an- 
other American audience that that story was 
not true. It is such a nice story to tell my 
Sabbath school class. It has such a good 
moral to it." Just think of that old lie hav- 
mg a good moral to it. 

'The story was no.t in the first "Life of Washington," writ- 
ten by "M. L. Weems, formerly pastor of Mount Vernon 
parish," published a few years before the death of Washing- 
ton, Dec. 14, 1799. It first appeared in the fifth edition pub- 
lished in 1806 and was copied bodily from an English gen- 
tleman's sketch of his son, which appeared in England m 
1799. Weems says it was communicated to him by "an aged 
lady," who was a distant rela.tive. I think Weems was the 
most cheerful liar of his time, or, as Henry Fielding, the 
author of "Tom Jones," one of the first great novels of the 
world, said of the opposing lawyer, "With him, truth is a 
virtue which becomes very much fatigued by exercise." 



20 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

Tell the truth about Lincoln. He could 
not get the re-nomination. He wanted to 
stay in Congress and if he had not chosen to 
stay there Mrs. Lincoln wished to continue 
to be a Congressman's wife and that would 
have settled it. His speech against the Mex- 
ican War put him out of Congress and end- 
ed his political career for the time being. I 
see the hand of God in it. The Almighty was 
reserving Lincoln to save this Nation. If he 
had been re-elected in 1848 he would have 
been in the Congress that passed the "com- 
promise measures" of 1850, including the 
Fugitive Slave law. If he had had a career in 
Congress at that time and taken a part in the 
Congressional turmoils preceding the war 
he would never have been President. If he 
had voted against the Fugitive Slave law, he 
would never have been nominated, and if he 
had voted for it he would not have been 
elected. 

Does not the truth fit him better than the 
untruth? The artist who takes a line out of 
his rugged face, or the author who takes a 
true line out of his history is an enemy of 
truth. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 21 

Does it not appear that Almighty God was 
saving this man for a great work? He then 
returned to Springfield and settled down to 
the practice of law, the deadest politician in 
Illinois. There was great grief in the Lin- 
coln home. Mrs. Lincoln had to leave Wash- 
ington society. It undoubtedly furnished 
an occasion when he would rather have heard 
her speak French than English. He then 
determined to withdraw permanently from 
politics and make a good lawyer of himself. 
For the first time in his life he settled down 
to the serious study of books. It was his 
habit to read men more than hoohs. He em- 
braced this opportunity as he could not have 
done if he had stayed in Congress, and be- 
came a good lawyer. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
on May 30, 1854, aroused his indignation 
and brought him again into the political are- 
na. He saw in it the dangers which precip- 
itated secession. On October 16 he made 
one of the five^ great speeches which formu- 

^The five great speeches were those delivered at 

Springfield, 111., Feb. 22, 1842; 

Peoria, 111., Oct. 16, 1854; 

Springfield, III, June 16, 1858; 

Columbus, O., Sept. 16, 1859, and 

Cooper Institute, N. Y. City, Feb. 27, 1860. 



22 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

lated his political creed (in reply to Senator 
Douglas) on the Kansas-Nebraska law, 
which repealed the Missouri Compromise. 

He became a candidate for the legislature 
and was elected in November, 1854. The re- 
turns showed a majority in the legislature 
opposed to the re-election of Senator Shields 
and in favor of the principles Lincoln had 
advocated during the campaign. He at once 
became a candidate for the United States 
Senate and resigned his seat in the legisla- 
ture. When the balloting took place on Feb. 
8, 1855, Lincoln had forty-seven votes and 
Lyman Trumbull five. Four members were 
controlled by State Senator John M. Palmer 
and would not vote for Lincoln, and it took 
fifty-one to elect. On the eleventh ballot 
Lincoln had his name withdrawn and Judge 
Trumbull was elected. His defeat was Prov- 
idential. Had he gone to the Senate and 
been prominent in all the questions that led 
up to the secession he would not have been 
nominated for President. God was saving 
him for the great work of preserving this Na- 
tion. He again went back to his law ofiice 
and Mrs. Lincoln spent the coming years in 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 23 

Springfield instead of Washington society. 

In 1858 Lincoln was again nominated for 
the Senate and the seven great joint debates^ 
took place between him and Douglas, but 
when it was all over, Lincoln was again 
Providentially defeated. He had to go back 
to Springfield and practice law. Grief again 
in the Lincoln home. Oh, if she could only 
have been a Senator's wife! 

The next year he attempted lyceum lectur- 
ing on the subject "Discoveries, Inventions 
and Improvements," which proved a dismal 
failure. 

A few months ago I visited Lincoln's old 
home in Springfield, a modest little frame 
house which perhaps cost $3,000.00, the only 
real estate that Lincoln ever owned. It is 
now owned by the State of Illinois, and while 
there was shown by the attendant the sofa 
upon which Miss Mary Todd entertained 
both Douglas and Lincoln while courting her 

^The debates took place as follows: 
Ottawa, III, August 21, 1858. 
Freeport, III., August 27, 1858. 
Jonesboro, 111., Sept. 15, 1858. 
Charleston, III, Sept. 18, 1858. 
Galesburg, III, Oct. 7, 1858. 
Quincy, III, Oct. 13, 1858. 
Alton, III. Oct. 15. 1858. 



24 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

in her sister's home. That was the first time 
Stephen A. Douglas got the better of Lincoln 
— when he didn't get her. 

During the debate Lincoln said if Douglas 
won the Senatorship he would never be Pres- 
ident of the United States. He might well 
have said that if Lincoln is beaten for the 
Senatorship then he will have a chance for 
the Presidency. If Lincoln had been elected 
Senator in 1858 he would never have been 
President. No man has yet gone from the 
Senate Chamber to the White House. Sena- 
tors Seward, Cameron, and Chase tried it in 
1860, and many other Senators at different 
periods. 

Lincoln was a man who always arose to 
the greatness of the occasion. That is the 
sign of greatness, and there have been but 
few great men in the world's history and 
very few in American history. We think of 
Presidents and Cabinet officers and Govern- 
ors and Senators and Congressmen as big 
men. They are big on small occasions, but 
usually small on great occasions. There are 
only a few great men on great occasions and 
Lincoln was one of them. Lincoln had been 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 25 

talked of for the Presidency. He was invited 
to deliver an address in New York City at 
Cooper Institute on February 27, 1860/ All 

^Of this speech Joseph H. Choate said: 

"It is now forty years since I first saw and heard Abraham 
Lincoln, but the impression he left on my mind is inefface- 
able. After his great successes in the West he came to 
New York to make a political address. He appeared in every 
sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom 
he loved to be counted. At first sight there was nothing 
ihnpressive or imposing about him, except that his great 
stature singled him out from .the crowd; his clothes hung 
awkwardly on his giant frame ; his face was of a dark pallor, 
without the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged 
features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep- 
set eyes looked sad and anxious ; his countenance in repose 
gave little evidence of that brain power which had raised 
him from the lowest to the highest station among his country- 
men. As he talked to me before the meeting he seemed ill at 
ease, with that sort of apprehension which a young man might 
feel before presenting himself to a new and strange audience 
whose critical disposition be dreaded. 

"It was a great audience, including all the noted men — all 
.the learned and cultured of his party in New York, editors, 
clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, critics. They were 
dll very curious to hear him. His fame as a powerful speak- 
er had preceded him, and exaggerated rumor of his wit had 
reached the East. When Mr. Bryant presented him on the 
high platform of the Cooper Institute a vast sea of eager, 
upturned faces greeted _him, full of intense curiosity to see 
what this rude child of the people was like. He was equal to 
the occasion. When he spoke he was transformed; his eyes 
kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light 
up the whole assembly. For an hour and a half he held his 
audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of speech 
and manner of delivery were severely simple. What Lowell 
called "The Great Simplicities" of The Bible" with which he 
was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no 
attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or pretense, 
he spoke straight to the point. If any came expecting the 
turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier they must 
have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his 



26 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

political New York turned out to hear him. 
They said let us go and we will have a good 
chance to laugh, and we shall enjoy it. Wil- 
liam Cullen Bryant introduced him, and 
Abraham Lincoln stepped forward and de- 
livered an address an hour and a half in 
length. No one smiled. He knew that to 
go to New York and make a speech that 

utterances. It was marvelous to see how this untutored man, 
by mere self discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, 
had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his way to the 
grandeur and strength of absolute simplicity. 

"He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so 
thoroughly. He demonstrated by copious historical proofs 
and masterly logic that the fathers who created the Constitu- 
tion_ in order to form a more perfect union, to establish 
justice, and to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves 
and their posterity, intended to empower the Federal Govern- 
ment to exclude slavery from the territories. In the kindliest 
spirit he protested against the avowed threat of the southern 
states to destroy the Union if, in order to secure freedom in 
those vast regions, out of which future states were to be 
carved, a Republican President were elected. He closed with 
an appeal to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his 
aroused and kindling conscience, with a full outpouring of his 
love of justice and liberty, to maintain their political pur- 
pose on that lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong 
which alone could justify it and not to be intimidated from 
their high resolve and sacred duty by any threats of destruc- 
tion to the government or of ruin to themselves. He con- 
cluded with this telling sentence, which drove the whole argu- 
ment home to all our hearts: 

" 'Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that 
faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we under- 
stand it.' 

"That night the great hall, and the next day the whole 
city, rang with delighted applause and congratulations, and 
he who had come as a stranger departed with the laurels of a 
great triumph." 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 27 



would make everybody laugh would not 
stamp him as a man big enough for the Pres- 
idency of the United States. Instead he in- 
terpreted the conception of the founders of 
the National Government, on the slavery 
question, in the light of the constitution, as 
no other man had in all our history. It was 
the greatest constitutional argument against 
the position of the South since Webster's re- 
ply to Hayne, and was not second to it.' He 
arose to the greatness of the occasion. That 
speech ought to have prevented the Civil 
War. It would have prevented secession, 
had not the South appealed from reason and 
logic to the sword. From that day Abraham 
Lincoln was an available candidate for the 
Presidency. I wish you would all read that 
speech, as his character is stamped on every 
page of it, and especially the last sentence, 
and every American ought to have it indeli- 
bly impressed on his memory, and act on it 
on all civic occasions. He closed that great 
speech with these words : "Let us have faith, 

^Daniel Webs.ter, Senator from Massachusetts made his 

famous reply to Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Caro ma 

in the U. S. Senate Jan. 26, 1830, on the question of State 
Sovereignty. 



28 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

that right makes might, and in that faith, let 
us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we un- 
derstand it/' Oh, if all Americans would act 
upon that, we would have better civil gov- 
ernment that we now have. 

We have now traced the career of Lincoln 
up to 1860. What is. there about his record 
that should have made him the proper can- 
didate for the Presidency? He could not suc- 
cessfully run a grocery store in a village 
composed of one hundred inhabitants. He 
had been a failure in the legislature. He had 
been a failure in Congress from any worldly 
standpoint. He had failed twice to be elected 
United States Senator. He had made a fail- 
ure of lyceum lecturing. He had been a suc- 
cessful lawyer as many other men had. Why 
was it that the Nation turned toward him 
as the man to be President of the United 
States in one of the most trying times in the 
history of our country. When had he ever 
shown executive ability? He had never been 
president of a village, mayor of a city or gov- 
ernor of a state. Why should he have been 
chosen? My answer to that is, because of 
his great character. The people believed in 



LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 29 

him. They had faith in his honesty. He was 
called "Honest Old Abe." It was in a period 
of great moral awakening; and they were 
looking for a man to represent a great moral 
question. All people had faith in his integ- 
rity' and character. That was one thing 
that stood before the American people above 
everything else, and I think the day and hour 
has come when we should teach this gener- 
ation of people that that was the one great 
reason why this man with his limited ex- 
perience and with the surrounding circum- 
stances of his life was selected to be the Pres- 
ident of the United States. What gave him 
this character? I shall attribute the founda- 
tion of it to the fact that from his youth he 
chose between right and wrong and was a 
total abstainer from intoxicating liquor, 
from tobacco, from profanity and he never 
gambled; the four great vices that were so 
common with the people among whom he 
mingled. And because he chose between 
right and wrong regardless of his associates, 
and kept away from these vices, he built a 
character that made him the man for the 
Presidency in the minds of the people. There 



30 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

has not been a biographer, not a single one, 
who has written a page on that part of his 
Hfe, and Nicolay and Hay, who wrote his Hfe 
in ten volumes, which should have been the 
standard life of Lincoln for all time,^ did not 
find room to refer to these things. Lincoln, 
on the 22nd day of February, 1842, made one 
of the greatest temperance speeches that has 
ever been made in this country.^ He asked 
people to sign the pledge in the "Washing- 
tonian Movement" and was a member of the 
Sons of Temperance. In 1855 he spent five 
or six weeks advocating the adoption of a 
prohibition law then submitted to a vote of 
the people in Illinois. It is said they left 
these facts out because they thought it 
would hurt the sale of the book. Oh! the 
time will soon come when the American peo- 
ple will not be ashamed to say that Abraham 

*No two men in tl..e United States knew Lincoln better than 
John Hay and John G. Nicolay, who were his private secre- 
taries, but it is a singular fact that no man ever writes a good 
true biography of an intimate friend or companion or_ even 
contemporary. He is more ap.t to see the small things in his 
life than the large ones. Coming ages are looking for the 
big things he did which have had an effect on civilization. He 
sees in every line how it is likely to affect the family or asso- 
ciates of his subject and himself in their good opinion. It 
is easier to tell the whole truth when they are dead. 

'See Appendix. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 31 

Lincoln never used alcohol or tobacco, or 
profanity, or engaged in gambling. 

I would put in the biographies of this 
great man and teach this generation that 
the most valuable asset in any position of 
life is character. There was no other reason 
for the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for 
the Presidency. The convention met, Lincoln 
was nominated and elected. Ordinarily the 
four months between election and inaugura- 
tion is a period of great happiness for a Presi- 
dent-elect. The whole world is applauding 
him, politicians and statesmen of all parties 
praising him; a time of great joy. Not so 
with Lincoln. Nothing but grief and sor- 
row. The official vote had hardly been de- 
clared before the news came that South 
Carolina had seceded and other States fol- 
lowed. What did it mean? That Lincoln 
had to sit there at Springfield for four long 
months with his hands tied, could neither 
speak nor act and see the Nation being torn 
to pieces, leaving to him the task of mend- 
ing it. 

He went to the Presidency with less politi- 
cal party support than any man who was 



32 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 

ever President. His own party trembled for 
him. They said this untried man who has 
never shown any executive abiHty we have 
elected President of the Uinted States, and 
he is the man who is to solve the mightiest 
problems in our history. They doubted him; 
they said he was probably a weak man ; that 
in the Presidency he might let the Nation 
be destroyed. 

When inauguration day came on the 
Fourth of March, 1861, and Lincoln stepped 
to the East portico of the Capitol to deliver 
his inaugural address,^ he then had it in his 
power to destroy this Nation in a fifteen 
minutes speech, but he <^i(^W(9^. He arose to 
the greatness of the occasion. He was a 
Nationalist. He had learned the principles 
of Nationalism from 'George Washington 
and John Marshall; and whtvethei/ left the 
cords of Nationalism they were gathered up 
by Lincoln and woven into his inaugural ad- 
dress, and he never lost sight of them until 
they became the accepted law of the land at 
Appomattox. 

After he had delivered it, stating sub- 



*See Appendix. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 33 

stantially that we were a Nation, and his 
oath of office would make him preserve it to 
the very last, the country breathed easier. 
He had said in words what the Nation felt 
but could not express. All the principal men 
of the Nation saw that he was the man. He 
arose to the greatness and dignity of the oc- 
casion in that inaugural address, the great- 
est in history, for in it he laid the foundation 
to save the Nation. 

He had more trouble <with his Cabinet 
than all other Presidents combined. Instead 
of being loyal to him, laying aside their 
political ambitions in this hour of the Na- 
tion's greatest trials, they began quarreling 
among themselves and plotting to succeed 
him as President. Oh! I tell you, my dear 
friends, that when the true history of this 
Nation is written, there will be some of them 
who will appear mighty small and certainly 
unpatriotic. Secretary of State Seward was 
sure he knew more than the President. In- 
side of ninety days he got off his high horse; 
Lincoln leaned over and took hold of the 
gentleman's collar, and carefully put him on 
behind and continued to handle the reins 



34 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

himself. Seward accepted the situation and 
thereafter made a good Secretary of State. 
He had political sense enough to know that 
if Lincoln's administration were a success, 
he must be his own successor, and if it failed 
no one of his party could be elected. 

Then he had trouble with Chase, Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, who had the Presi- 
dential microbe working in his head. A very 
bad case of it and he never got over it, even 
after he got to be Chief Justice. He spent 
his days and nights studying how he could 
beat Lincoln and be President himself. But 
he was so good a Secretary of the Treasury 
that Lincoln w^as broad enough and great 
enough to overlook his Presidential fever 
and kept him at his post. Nearly all of them 
were making him trouble instead of helping 
him; some one said to him, ''Why don't you 
send all those fellows home?" "What," said 
Lincoln, "Send Seward back to New York, 
Chase to Ohio, Cameron to Pennsylvania, 
and Montgomery Blair to Maryland ! Why 
I can watch them a great deal easier around 
this Cabinet table than I could if they were 
at home." He was not only a statesman, 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 35 

but a philosopher and diplomat. He was a 
man of great tact, which is the gentle art of 
doing things the best way. 

Matters got so bad in the war department 
that he had to get rid of Secretary Cameron. 
But he did not send him back to Pennsyl- 
vania. He sent him as Envoy Extraordi- 
nary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Rus- 
sia. Then he appointed Edwin M. Stanton, 
the greatest Secretary of War this Nation 
ever had. A man of iron, with nerves of 
steel, and there he firmly held the power of 
Secretary of War with Lincoln's guiding 
hand to save the Nation. But he was the 
trial of Lincoln's life. Oh! the patience re- 
quired to bear with him. He was the Mars 
of this world — Lincoln was the Venus of 
earth. One day he sent an order to Stanton 
to pardon some one, and Stanton tore it up 
and threw it in the waste basket. The gen- 
tleman returned and told Lincoln that Stan- 
ton said he was a fool. Lincoln replied, "If 
Stanton said so it must be so.'* A few hours 
later he repeated the order and it was 
obeyed. When Lincoln was a boy he used 
to plow and when he came to a nice apple 



36 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

tree, which some day would bear fruit, he 
plowed around it, and that is the way he did 
with Stanton, "plowed around him," because 
he knew he was a great Secretary of War. 
Oh, the patience he had. The patience to 
stand him those three long years of war. No 
one could ever have stood Stanton three 
years who had not been taught patience by 
living with Mrs. Lincoln twenty years. So 
you see there is a compensation for all trials. 
These things all entered into the life of the 
man who had this mighty task on his hands 
of saving this Nation. But it just seems as 
though nothing ever came to him to make 
life easy and happy as it does to ordinary 
mortals. 

Then he had trouble with his generals, 
especially McClellan and Fremont. They 
had not their shoulder straps on twenty-four 
hours before they began making arrange- 
ments to be President next time. Others 
followed in order. Give them a little promo- 
tion and they got "the big head." Lilliputian 
politicians, about 4 by 4 inches square, and 
they could never see anything bigger than 
themselves. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 37 

Be it said to the everlasting credit of the 
Federal army that Lincoln finally found 
three generals who did not want to be Presi- 
dent, who knew how and were willing to 
fight, and who were never jealous of each 
other or any one else. Place high on the roll 
of true patriotism the names of Generals 
Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. 

And he had trouble with Congress of 
course. Oh ! if we could only carry on war 
without a Congress, with its resolutions and 
speeches. A debating society never won a 
battle. When the cabinet was all right, the 
"big head" generals dismissed, Congress not 
in session, and Mrs; Lincoln asleep, then 
Horace Greele}^ always said some fool thing 
in the New York Tribune. The war went on 
and he arose above these things and carried 
burdens that others should have borne with 
the one great thought of saving the Nation. 

We now come to the emancipation proc- 
lamation. I presume if I were to ask an or- 
dinary American audience what was the 
greatest act of Lincoln's life, the reply would 
be, "Signing the emancipation proclama- 
tion." ''With one great stroke of his pen he 



38 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

struck the shackles from four million slaves,*' 
I actually read that the other day in one of 
our great daily papers. Why do people say 
that? There is not a word of truth in it — it 
did not free a single slave — either the pre- 
liminary proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, or 
the final one of January 1, 1863. You must 
remember that the proclamation only pro- 
vided that the slaves v^ithin the Confederate 
lines should be free, leaving the ones w^ithin 
the Federal lines to remain in slavery. All 
the slaves in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, 
Delaw^are, West Virginia, Tennessee, and, 
parts of Virginia and Louisiana w^ere not 
included in the proclamation. It tried to 
free onlv the slaves over w^hich the Nation 
then had no control, and left in slavery all 
those over v^hich it had physical control.^ 

What happened? Enlistments fell off, de- 
sertions increased in the army; officers re- 
signed their commissions; it divided the 
North and solidified the South; stocks went 
down, and when the elections came in the 
fall of 1862 the administration lost thirty- 



'The Fugitive Slave law was not repealed until June 28, 
1864. The 13th Amendment which took effect Dec. 18, 1865, 
freed the slaves. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 39 

eight seats in the House of Representatives 
and lost heavily in the states of New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and In- 
diana. Lincoln lost his own State, which 
sent to the Senate a man who fought his ad- 
ministration; and the legislature contained 
so many rebels that Governor Yates pro- 
rogued them and sent them home, — the only 
like instance in American history. The ef- 
fect of the proclamation on foreign countries 
fell far short of the expectations of the ad- 
ministration. Are we not far enough from 
the war now to tell the truth about this mat- 
ter? I think it was the greatest mistake of 
his administration. It was at least of doubt- 
ful utility.' 

That was not his greatest act. What then 
was his greatest act? When the flag was 
shot down at Fort Sumter he had to decide 
whether or not the constitution gave him 
power to "coerce a sovereign State." Nearly 
all the best constitutional lawyers of the 
country decided that he had no such power. 
Lincoln again arose to the greatness of the 
occasion and decided that this Nation had in- 

^See Appendix. 



40 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

herent power to save its own life. No greater 
or better interpretation of the Constitution 
was ever made by Chief Justice Marshall. 
The decision was equivalent to an amend- 
ment to the Constitution. No one disputes 
its correctness now. It took a Lincoln to see 
it then. To decide that he had such power 
meant that we were a "Nation of people," 
and not a ''Union of States." We would have 
been destroyed as a Nation in an hour had 
he decided otherwise. He then issued his 
call for 75,000 men and they came. When 
others were called they came, and our Na- 
tional unity was preserved. 

In my opinion this was the greatest act 
of his life. 

Signing the emancipation proclamation 
sinks into insignificance compared to it. 

If we could destroy the larger part of all 
that has ever been said about Lincoln and 
start with one good, true life of him, I should 
have hopes that some time in the near future 
we might begin to comprehend this most in- 
comprehensible man. 

He was invited to make a few dedicatory 
remarks on the occasion of the dedication of 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 41 

a portion of the battlefield of Gettysburg as 
a National Cemetery November 19, 1863. 
Edward Everett v^as to deliver the main ad- 
dress, v^hich took over tw^o hours, and w^as 
a magnificent effort. There v^ere 100,000 
people present. 

It w^as a great occasion and Lincoln did 
not fail to be as great as the occasion. After 
Mr. Everett's oration, he stepped forv^ard 
and read from a sheet of paper ten sentences, 
268 words. The Gettysburg address.' The 
only bit of American literature ever taught 
in an English University. The battle of Get- 
tysburg was the decisive battle of the Civil 
War, and one of the greatest in all history. 
Lincoln wanted to ask his people not to let 
the men who fell there ''die in vain." If he 
made a long speech they would not read it, 
so he made it short enough for them to com- 
mit to memory. Those words so touched 
the Northern heart and quickened it to ac- 
tion, for the remaining conflict, that their 
importance became second only to the bat- 
tle of Gettysburg itself. Everett's speech 
did not live an hour. Lincoln's will live for- 



esee Appendix. 



42 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

ever. Of this speech Senator Charles Sum- 
ner said: ''Since Simonides wrote the epi- 
taph of those who died at Thermopylae, 
nothing equal has ever been breathed over 
the fallen dead/' 

Incomprehensible Lincoln! No one ever 
called him a scholar. He was never noted 
for being a man of great learning. Up to 
this time no University had proposed to con- 
fer upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws/ 
Yet we find him writing such masterpieces 
of English as the Gettysburg address, the 
two Inaugural addresses,^ the Cooper Insti- 
tute speech and many others. His letters are 
such masterpieces of logic, reason and good 
English that they are not second to Bacon's 
Essays. Some of his sentences are like a 
demonstration in Euclid. Here is one. After 
t]}e fall of Vicksburg and the North had 
gained control of the Mississippi river, he 
summed up the situation in one sentence of 
ten words thus: 'The Father of Waters 



*In December, 1864, the degree of LL.D. was conferred 
upon President Lincoln in absentia by the Trustees of the 
College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. His letter 
of acceptance was dated Washington, Dec. 27, 1864. He 
never got to Princeton in person to receive the degree 
formally. 

'See appendix. 



UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 43 

again goes unvexed to the Sea." In all 
of Shakespeare you can hardly find a more 
comprehensive sentence. 

I think Lincoln wrote the best English of 
any man since Shakespeare, and it is as hard 
for us to conceive that the Lincoln of New 
Salem was the Lincoln of Gettysburg, as it 
IS to believe that the Shakespeare of Strat- 
ford is the Shakespeare of the plays. 

In the presidential campaign of 1864, 
when Lincoln stood for re-election, there 
took place the bitterest campaign in our his- 
tory. He had three formidable foes to com- 
bat, the secessionist in the field in the South, 
the Democratic party of the North, and 
w^orse than both the former were the trait- 
ors, brainy, ambitious, dishonest, unpatriotic 
politicians w^ho wanted office and promotion 
worse than they wanted to save the Nation, 
who were prominent members of his own 
party. They not only fought him until he 
was re-nominated, but demanded his decli- 
nation thereafter. 

He was so villified and maligned by men 
who ought to have been his supporters, that 
for him personally it took all the honor and 
pleasure out of his re-election. 



44 UNCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

Nothing could come to him as to other 
men to give him pleasure and happiness. It 
seems as though that was not to be. During 
it all no bitter word of resentment was ever 
spoken by him. 

Lincoln will live in the love and admira- 
tion of the people of this Nation when his 
maligners shall have become the unremem- 
bered mold of mediocrity and malice, — the 
forgotten dust of defeat. 

Let us mark the contrast between the lives 
of our two greatest Americans. 

Washington was born of a race of cava- 
liers, and was the greatest of them all. 

Lincoln was born a plebeian and was the 
poorest of ten thousand. 

Washington's boyhood days were filled 
with joy and prosperity, and at nineteen he 
was one of the Adjutants-General of Vir- 
ginia, with the rank of Major. 

Lincoln's childhood was filled with sor- 
row, and at twenty-one, uneducated, un- 
known, and not cared for, he was driving 
two yoke of oxen hitched to an emigrant 
wagon, going from Indiana to Illinois. 

Washington enjoyed more than forty 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 45 

years of domestic felicity, never excelled in 
the lives of great men. 

Lincoln's married life of tv^enty-two years 
we will not dwell upon. 

Washington was a success as a planter, 
financier, legislator, general, statesman and 
President. All things transpired in such a 
manner as to give him honor and pleasure 
out of public service. 

Lincoln's only great success came to him 
through the Presidency. The attaining and 
administration of the office gave him little 
personal happiness. 

Washington, after a career of unprece- 
dented' success in war and peace retired to 
his beautiful Mt. Vernon home with' his 
kindred and friends around him. No great 
sorrow had ever entered his life. In ripe old 
age, in that peaceful home, with his beloved 
Martha by his side he laid down to rest — 
''and he was not.*' 

Lincoln, who had always worn "sorrow's 
crown of sorrow" came to his death while 
yet bearing the burden, in a public place 
with the enactment of the greatest tragedy 
since the crucifixion/ 



^President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth 



46 LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 

In some respects they were alike. They 
were both great men. No opportunity was 
ever too great for them to grasp. 

Each stood for a great moral and political 
reform. 

No man lives in history and the hearts of 
the people who does not stand for the fore- 
most moral reform of his day. 

We Americans have a right to feel a little 
proud of the fact that this marvelous young 
Republic produced the greatest man in the 
World's history of the 18th century in the 
person of George Washington; and the 
greatest of the 19th in the person of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 

Our limit is not yet. We shall furnish 
the greatest man of the 20th century. We 
are looking for him now. He will be the 
Statesman who is big enough to rise to the 
greatness of opportunity and lead this Na- 
tion to the Prohibition of the liquor traffic. 
His name in history will be written by the 
side of Washington and Lincoln. 

at Ford's Theater, Washington, D. C, on the evening of April 
14, 1865, a few minutes past 10 o'clock. He was carried to a 
house across the street, remaining unconscious until he died 
at 7:22 o'clock on the morning of the 15th. 

He was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, 111., 
May 4. 



LINCOLN: THE MAN OF SORROW 47 

In no respect did the life of Lincoln more 
resemble that of our Saviour than in his last 
days. 

Passion Week means human triumphs — 
death in agony. Palm Sunday is the Sun- 
day of victory. Good Friday, the day of 
crucifixion and assassination. 

Earthly success and triumph came to the 
Lord Jesus Christ but once, and that v^as 
marked by his triumphal entry into Jerusa- 
lem late in the afternoon of Sunday, April 
2, A. D. 30. As the multitude escorted Him 
into the Holy City, they strewed palms in 
his pathv^ay, and it has been called Palm 
Sunday to this day. 

This earthly triumph of '7^^^ Christ, 
the Man of many Sorrows," took different 
forms from day to day until April 7, Good 
Friday, when his enemies again took pos- 
session of the City, and He died on the 
Cross. 

Abraham Lincoln's life would have been 
a failure if secession had triumphed and the 
states been dissevered. 

Success came to him but once also, and 
was marked by the victory of the Federal 
Army at Appomattox when General Le'e 



48 LINCOLN : THE MAN OF SORROW 

surrendered to General Grant, on April 9, 
A. D. 1865, which was also Palm Sunday. 
Late in the afternoon the news reached 
Washington. The war was over. The 
burden was lifted. The Nation was not dis- 
severed, and President Lincoln's name and 
fame were secure forever. This triumph of 
"Lincoln, the Man of Sorrow" took differ- 
ent forms from day to day, and made up a 
large part of the happiness of a life time, 
until April 14, which was also Good Friday, 
when, for the first time in history the "Com- 
mander-in-Chief of a victorious army was 
pierced by a bullet, such as had caused the 
death of so many thousands of his brave 
soldiers on the field of battle. 

He could not have wished to have died at 
the hands of an assassin in any other man- 
ner. 

Triumphant success came into their 
earthly lives but once, and that was on Palm 
Sunday. Five days thereafter and on Good 
Friday, Jesus was crucified. 

Five days therafter and on Good Friday, 
Lincoln was assassinated, and the parallel 
is complete. 



Appendix, 



AN ADDRESS 

Delivered before the Springfield Washington Temperance Society, 

on the 22nd of February, 1842, 

By ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Esq., 

And published by direction of the Society. 

Although the Temperance cause has been 
in progress for near twenty years, it is ap- 
parent to all, that it is just now being 
crowned with a degree of success, hitherto 
unparalleled. 

The list of its friends is daily swelled by 
the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of 
thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly 
transformed from a cold, abstract theory, to 
a living, breathing, active and powerful 
chieftain, going forth "conquering and to 
conquer." The citadels of his great adver- 
sary are daily being stormed and disman- 
tled; his temples and his altars, where the 
rites of his idolatrous worship have long 
been performed, and where human sacri- 
fices have long been wont to be made, are 
daily desecrated and deserted. The trump 



50 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

of the conquerer's fame is sounding from 
hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to 
land, and calling millions to his standard at 
a blast. 

For this new and splendid success, we 
heartily rejoice. That that success is so 
much greater now, than heretofore, is 
doubtless owing to rational causes; and if 
we would have it continue, we shall do well 
to inquire what those causes are. The war- 
fare heretofore waged against the demon 
Intemperance, has, somehow or other, been 
erroneous. Either the champions engaged, 
or the tactics they adopted, have not been 
the most proper. These champions for the 
most part, have been Preachers, Lawyers, 
and hired agents. Between these and the 
mass of mankind, there is a want of ap- 
proachahility, if the term be admissible, 
partially at least, fatal to their success. They 
are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling 
or interest, with those very persons whom 
it is their object to convince and persuade. 

And again, it is so easy and so common 
to ascribe motives to men of these classes 
other than those they profess to act upon. 
The preacher, it is said, advocates temper- 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 51 

ance because he is a fanatic, and desires a 
union of the Church and State; the laivyer, 
from his pride and vanity of hearing himself 
speak; and the hired agent for his salary. 
But when one, who has long been known as 
a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters 
that have bound him, and appears before his 
neighbors "clothed and in his right mind," 
a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, 
and stands up with tears of joy trembling in 
eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, 
noiv to be endured no more forever; of his 
once naked and starving children, now clad 
and fed comfortably; of a wife, long weighed 
down with woe, weeping, and a broken 
heart, now restored to health, happiness, 
and a renewed affection; and how easily it is 
all done, once it is resolved to be done; how- 
ever simple his language, there is a logic 
and an eloquence in it that few with human 
feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he 
desires a union of church and state, for he is 
not a church member; they cannot say he 
is vain of hearing himself speak, for his 
whole demeanor shows he would gladly 
avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he 



52 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

Speaks for pay, for he receives none, and 
asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any 
way be doubted; or his sympathy for those 
he would persuade to imitate his example, 
be denied. 

In my judgment, it is to the battles of this 
new class of champions that our late success 
is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had 
the old-school champions themselves been 
of the most wise selecting, was their system 
of tactics, the most judicious? It seems to 
me, it was not. Too much denunciation 
against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers was 
indulged in. This, I think, was both impoli- 
tic and unjust. It was impolitic, because it 
is not much in the nature of man to be driven 
to anything; still less to be driven about 
that which is exclusively his own business; 
and least of all, where such driving is to be 
submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary 
interest, or burning appetite. When the 
dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly 
told, not in the accents of entreaty and per- 
suasion, diflidently addressed by erring man 
to an erring brother; but in the thundering 
tones of anathema and denunciation, with 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 53 

which the lordly judge often groups to- 
gether all the crimes of the felon's life, and 
thrusts them in his face just ere he passes 
sentence of death upon him, that they were 
the authors of all the vice and misery and 
crime in the land; that they were the manu- 
facturers and material of all the thieves and 
robbers and murderers that infest the earth; 
that their houses were the workshops of the 
devil; and that their persons should be 
shunned by all the good and virtuous as 
moral pestilences. — I say, when they were 
told all this ,and in this way, it is not won- 
derful that they were slow, very slow, to 
acknowledge the truth of such denuncia- 
tions, and to join the ranks of their denounc- 
ers, in a hue and cry against themselves. 

To have expected them to do otherwise 
than they did — to have expected them not 
to meet denunciation with denunciation, 
crimination with crimination, and anathema 
with anathema — was to expect a reversal of 
human nature, which is God's decree and 
can never be reversed. When the conduct of 
men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, 
kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be 



54 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, 
''that a drop of honey catches more flies than 
a gallon of gall." — So with men. If you 
would win a man to your cause, first con- 
vince him that you are his sincere friend. 
Therein is a drop of honey that catches his 
heart, which, say what he will, is the great 
high road to his reason, and which, when 
once gained, you will find but little trouble 
in convincing his judgment of the justice of 
your cause, if indeed that cause really be a 
just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate 
to his judgment, or to command his action, 
or to mark him as one to be shunned and de- 
spised, and he will retreat within himself, 
close all the avenues to his head and his 
heart ; and though your cause be naked truth 
itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, 
harder than steel, and sharper than steel can 
be made, and though you throw it with more 
than Herculean force and precision, you 
shall be no more able to pierce him than to 
penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise v/ith a 
rye straw. 

Such is man, and so mustht be understood 
by those who lead him, even to his own best 
interest. 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 55 

On this point, the Washingtonians greatly 
excel the temperance advocates of former 
times. Those whom they desire to convince 
and persuade, are their old friends and com- 
panions. They know they are not demons, 
nor even the worst of men. They know that 
generally they are kind, generous and char- 
itable, even beyond thq example of their 
more staid and sober neighbors. They are 
practical philanthropists; and they glow 
with a generous and brotherly zeal, that 
mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Be- 
nevolence and charity possess their hearts 
entirely; and out of the abundance of their 
hearts, their tongues give utterance, "Love 
through all their actions run, and all their 
words are mild." In this spirit they speak 
and act, and in the same, they are heard and 
regarded. And when such is the temper of 
the advocate, and such of the audience, no 
good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have 
said that denunciations against dram-sellers 
and dram-drinkers are unjust as well as im- 
politic. Let us see. 

I have not enquired at what period of 
time the use of intoxicating liquors com- 



56 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

menced, nor is it important to know. It is 
sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit 
the world, the practice of drinking them, is 
just as old as the world itself, — that is, we 
have seen the one, just as long as we have 
seen the other. When all such of us as, have 
now reached the years of maturity, first 
opened our eyes upon the stage of existence, 
we found intoxicating liquor, recognized by 
everybody, used by everybody, and repu- 
diated by nobody. It commonly entered into 
the first draught of the infant, and the last 
draught of the dying man. From the side- 
board of the parson down to the ragged 
pocket of the houseless loafer, it was con- 
stantly found. Physicians prescribed it in 
this, that, and the other disease. Govern- 
ment provided it for its soldiers and sailors; 
and to have a rolling or raising, a husking 
or hoe-down anywhere without it, was pos- 
itively unsufferahle. 

So, too, it was everywhere a respectable 
article of manufacture and of merchandise. 
The making of it was regarded as an hon- 
orable livelihood, and he who could make 
most was the most enterprising and respect- 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 57 

able. Large and small manufactories of it 
were everywhere erected, in which all the 
earthly goods of their owners were invested. 
Wagons drew it from town to town; boats 
bore it from clime to clime, and the winds 
wafted it from nation to nation; and mer- 
chants bought and sold it, by wholesale and 
by retail, with precisely the same feelings, 
on the part of the seller, buyer, and by- 
stander, as are felt at the selling and buying 
of flour, beef, bacon, or any other of the real 
necessaries of life. Universal public opin- 
ion not only tolerated, but recognized and 
adopted its use. 

It is true that even then it was known and 
acknowledged that many were greatly in- 
jured by it; but none seemed to think the 
injury arose from the use of a had thing, 
but from the abuse of a veri/ good thing. The 
victims to it were pitied, and compassionated 
just as now are the heirs of consumption, and 
other hereditary diseases. Their failing was 
treated as a misfortune, and not as a crime, 
or even as a disgrace. 

If, then, what I have been saying be true, 
is it wonderful, that some should think and 



58 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

act now, as all thought and acted twenty 
years ago? And is it just to assail, condemn, 
or despise them for doing so? The universal 
sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argu- 
ment, or at least an influence not easily over- 
come. The success of the argument in favor 
of the existence of an overruling Providence, 
mainly depends upon that sense; and men 
ought not, in justice, to be denounced for 
yielding to it, in any case, or for giving it up 
slowly, especially, v^here they are backed by 
interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites. 

Another error, as it seems to me, into 
which the old reformers fell was the position 
that all habitual drunkards were utterly in- 
corrigible, and therefore, must be turned 
adrift, and damned without remedy, in order 
that the grace of temperance might abound, 
to the temperate then, and to all mankind 
some hundred years thereafter. There is 
in this something so repugnant to humanity, 
so uncharitable, so cold blooded and feeling- 
less, that it never did, nor ever can enlist 
the enthusiasm of a popular cause. We could 
not love the man who taught it — we could 
not hear him with patience. The heart could 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 59 

not throw open its portals to it. The gen- 
erous man could not adopt it. It could not 
mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly 
selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers 
overboard, to lighten the boat for our se- 
curity — that the noble minded shrank from 
the manifest meanness of the thing. And be- 
sides this, the benefits of a reformation to be 
efTected by such a system were too remote 
in point of time, to warmly engage many in 
its behalf. Few can be induced to labor ex- 
clusively for posterity; and none will do it 
enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing 
for us; and theorize on it as we may, prac- 
tically we shall do very little for it, unless we 
are made to think we are, at the same time, 
doing something for ourselves. What an 
ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, 
to ask or expect a whole community to rise 
up and labor for the temporal happiness of 
others after themselves shall be consigned to 
the dust, a majority of which community 
take no pains whatever to secure their own 
eternal welfare, at a no greater distant day? 
Great distance, in either time or space, has 
wonderful power to lull and render quiescent 



60 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, 
or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead 
and gone, are but little regarded, even in our 
own cases, and much less in the cases of 
others. 

Still, in addition to this, there is something 
so ludicrous in promises of good, or threats 
of evil, a great v^ay off, as to render the 
whole subject with which they are connected, 
easily turned into ridicule. "Better lay down 
that spade you're stealing, Paddy — if you 
don't you'll pay for it at the day of judg- 
ment." "Be the powers, if ye'll credit me so 
long I'll take another jist." 

By the Washingtonians, this system of 
consigning the habitual drunkard to hope- 
less ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more 
enlarged philanthropy. They go for present 
as well as for future good. They labor for 
all now living as well as hereafter to live. 
They teach hope to all — despair to none. As 
applying to their cause, they deny the doc- 
trine of unpardonable sin. As in Christianity 
it is taught, so in this they teach, that 

"While the lamp holds out to burn 
The vilest sinner may return." 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 61 

And, what is matter of the most profound 
gratulation, they, by experiment upon ex- 
periment, and example upon example, prove 
the maxim to be no less true in the one case 
than in the other. On every hand we behold 
those who, but yesterday, were the chief of 
sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause. 
Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by 
sevens, and by legions; and their unfortunate 
victims, like the poor possessed, who was re- 
deemed from his long and lonely wanderings 
in the tombs, are publishing to the ends of 
the earth, how great things have been done 
for them. 

To these new champions, and this new 
system of tactics, our late success is mainly 
owing; and to them we must chiefly look for 
the final consummation. The ball is now roll- 
ing gloriously on, and none are so able as 
they to increase its speed, and its bulk, — to 
add to its momentum, and its magnitude. 
Even though unlearned in letters, for this 
task, none others are so well educated. To 
fit them for this work, they have been taught 
in the true school. They have been in that 
gulf from which they would teach others the 
means of escape. Thep have passed that 



62 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

prison wall, which others have long declared 
impassable; and who that has not, shall 
dare to weigh opinions with them as to the 
mode of passing. 

But if it be true, as I have insisted, that 
those who have suffered by intemperance 
personallyy and have reformed are the most 
powerful and efficient instruments to push 
the reformation to ultimate success, it does 
not follow, that those who have not suffered, 
have no part left them to perform. Whether 
or not the world would be vastly benefited 
by a total and final banishment from it of all 
intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now 
to be an open question. Three-fourths of 
mankind confess the affirmative with their 
tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknow- 
ledge it in their hearts. 

Ought any then, to refuse their aid in do- 
ing what the good of the whole demands? 
Shall he, who cannot do much, be, for that 
reason, excused if he do nothing? "But," 
says one, "what good can I do by signing 
the pledge? I never drink, even without 
signing." This question has already been 
asked and even answered more than millions 
of times. Let it be answered once more. 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 63 



For the man to suddenly, or in any other 
way, to break off from the use of drams, who 
has indulged in them for a long course of 
years, and until his appetite for them has be- 
come ten or a hundred fold stronger, and 
more craving, than any natural appetite can 
be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In 
such an undertaking, he needs every moral 
support and influence, that can possibly be 
brought to his aid, and thrown around him. 
And not only so, but every moral prop, 
should be taken from whatever argument 
might rise in his mind to lure him to his 
backsliding. When he casts his eyes around 
him he should be able to see all that he re- 
spects, all that he admires, and all that he 
loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him on- 
ward; and none beckoning him back, to his 
former miserable "wallowing in the mire." 

But it is said by some, that men will think 
and act for themselves; that none will disuse 
spirits or anything else merely because his 
neighbors do; and that moral influence is 
not that powerful engine contended for. Let 
us examine this. Let me ask the man who 
could maintain this position most stiffly, 
what compensation he will accept to go to 



64 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

church some Sunday and sit during the ser- 
mon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? 
Not a trifle, I'll venture. And why not? 
There would be nothing irreligious in it; 
nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. 
Then why not? Is it not because there would 
be something egregiously unfashionable 
in it ? Then it is the influence of fashion;; and 
what is the influence of fashion, but the in- 
fluence that other people's actions have on 
our own actions — the strong inclination 
each of us feels to do as we see all our neigh- 
bors do? Nor is the influence of fashion con- 
fined to any particular thing or class of 
things. It is just as strong on one subject 
as another. Let us make it as unfashionable 
to withhold our names from the temperance 
pledge as for husbands to wear their wives 
bonnets to church, and instances will be just 
as rare in the one case as the other. 

"But," say some, ''we are no drunkards; 
and we shall not acknowledge ourselves such 
by joining a reformed drunkards' society, 
whatever our influence might be." Surely 
no Christian will adhere to this objection. 
If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipo- 
tence condescended to take on Himself the 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 65 

form of sinful man and, as such, to die an 
ignominious death for their sakes, surely 
they will not refuse submission to the in- 
finitely lesser condescension for the temporal 
and perhaps eternal salvation of a large, err- 
ing, and unfortunate class of their own fel- 
low creatures. Nor is the condescension 
very great. 

In my judgment, such of us as have never 
fallen victims have been spared more from 
the absence of appetite, than from any men- 
tal or moral superiority over those who have. 
Indeed, I believe if we take habitual drunk- 
ards as a class, their heads and their hearts 
will bear an advantageous comparison with 
those of any other class. There seems ever 
to have been a proneness in the brilliant and 
warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The 
demon of intemperance ever seems to have 
delighted in sucking the blood of genius and 
of generosity. What one of us but can call 
to mind some dear relative, more promising 
in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen 
a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems 
to have gone forth, like the Egyptian angel 
of death, commissioned to slay if not the 
first, the fairest born of every family. Shall 



66 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

he now be arrested in his desolating career? 
In that arrest, all can give aid that will; and 
who shall be excused that can and will not? 
Far around as human breath has ever blown, 
he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, 
and our friends, prostrate in the chains of 
moral death. To all the living everywhere, 
we cry, "Come sound the moral resurrection 
trump, that these may rise and stand up an 
exceeding great army" — "Come from the 
four winds, O breath! and breathe upon 
these slain, that they may live." 

If the relative grandeur of revolutions 
shall be estimated by the great amount of 
human misery they alleviate, and the small 
amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be 
the grandest the world shall ever have seen. 
Of our political revolution of '76 we all are 
justly proud. It has given us a degree of 
political freedom, far exceeding that of any 
other of the nations of the earth. In it the 
world has found a solution of the long moot- 
ed problem as to the capability of man to 
govern himself. In it was the germ which 
has vegetated, and still is to grow and ex- 
pand into the universal liberty of mankind. 

But with all these glorious results, past, 



TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 67 

present, and to come, it has its evils too. 
It breathed forth famine, swam in blood, and 
rode on fire; and long, longafter, the orphans 
cry and the widows wail continued to break 
the sad silence that ensued. These were the 
price, the inevitable price, paid for the bless- 
ings it bought. 

Turn now, to the temperance revolution, 
in it we shall find a stronger bondage broken, 
a viler slavery manumitted^ a greater tyrant 
deposed. In it more of want supplied, more 
disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By 
it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. 
By it none wounded in feeling, none injured 
in interest. Even the dram-maker, and dram- 
seller, will have glided into other occupa- 
tions so gradually as never to have felt the 
shock of change, and will stand ready to join 
all others in the universal song of gladness. 

And what a noble ally this, to the cause 
of political freedom. With such an aid, its 
march cannot fail to be on and on, till every 
son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the 
sorrow-quenching draughts of perfect lib- 
erty. Happy day, when, all appetites con- 
trolled, all passions subdued, all matter sub- 
jected, mind all conquering mind shall live 



68 TEMPERANCE ADDRESS 

and move the monarch of the world. Glor- 
ious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! 
Reign of Reason, all hail! 

And when the victory shall be complete — 
when there shall be neither a slave nor a 
drunkard on the earth — how proud the title 
of that Land, which may truly claim to be 
the birthplace and the cradle of both those 
revolutions, that shall have ended in that 
victory. How nobly distinguished that Peo- 
ple who shall have planted, and nurtured to 
maturity, both the political and moral free- 
dom of their species. 

This is the one hundred and tenth anni- 
versary of the birthday of Washington. We 
are met to celebrate this day. Washington 
is the mightiest name of earth — long since 
mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still 
mightiest in moral reformation. On that 
name an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. 
To add brightness to the sun, or glory to 
the name of Washington, is alike impossible. 
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pro- 
nounce the name, and in its naked deathless 
splendor leave it shining on. 



The above is an exact copv as published in the Sangamo 
Journal, Springfield, 111., March 26, 1842. 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 

Fellow-Citizens of the United States: 

In compliance with a custom as old as the 
Government itself, I appear before you to 
address you briefly and to take in your pres- 
ence the oath prescribed by the Constitution 
of the United States to be taken by the 
President "before he enters on the execution 

of his office." 

I do not consider it necessary at present 
for me to discuss those matters of adminis- 
tration about which there is no special anx- 
iety or excitement. 

Apprehension seems to exist among the 
people of the Southern States that by the ac- 
cession of a Republican Administration their 
property and their peace and personal se- 
curity are to be endangered. There has never 
been any reasonable cause for such apprehen- 
sion Indeed, the most ample evidence to the 
contrary has all the while existed and been 
open to their inspection. It is found in nearly 
all the published speeches of him who now 
addresses you. I do but quote from one of 
those speeches when I declare that— 



70 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere 
with the institution of slavery in the States where it ex- 
ists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and i 
have no inclination to do so. 

Those who nominated and elected me did 
so with the full knowledge that I had made 
this and many similar declarations and 
had never recanted them; and more than 
this, they placed in the platform for my ac- 
ceptance, and as a law to themselves and to 
me, the clear and emphatic resolution which 
I now read: 

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights 
of the States, and especially the rights of each State to 
Order and control its own domestic institutions according 
to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that bal- 
ance of power on which the perfection and endurance of 
our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless 
invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Ter- 
ritory, no matter under what pretext, as among the 
gravest of crimes. 

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in 
doing so I only press upon the public atten- 
tion the most conclusive evidence of which 
the case is susceptible that the property, 
peace, and security of no section are to be in 
any wise endangered by the now incoming 
Administration. I add, too, that all the pro- 
tection which, consistently with the Consti- 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 71 

tution and the laws, can be given will be 
cheerfully given to all the States when law- 
fully demanded, for whatever cause — as 
cheerfully to one section as to another. 

There is much controversy about the de- 
livering up of fugitives from service or labor. 
The clause I now read is as plainly written 
in the Constitution as any other of its pro- 
visions: 

No person held to service or labor in one State, under 
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in conse- 
quence of any law or regulation therein be discharged 
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on 
claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be 
due. 

It is scarcely questioned that this pro- 
vision was intended by those who made it 
for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive 
slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is 
the law. All members of Congress swear 
their support to the whole Constitution — to 
this provision as much as to any other. To 
the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases 

come within the terms of this clause ''shall 

« 

be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. 
Now, if they would make the effort in good 
temper, could they not with equal unanimity 



72 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



frame and pass a law by means of which to 
keep good that unanimous oath? 

There is some difference of opinion 
whether this clause should be enforced by 
national or by State authority, but surely 
that difference is not a very material one. If 
the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of 
but little consequence to him or to others by 
which authority it is done. And should any- 
one in any case be content that his oath shall 
go unkept on a merely unsubstantial con- 
troversy as to how it shall be kept? 

Again: In any law upon this subject 
ought not all the safeguards of liberty known 
in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be 
introduced, so that a free man be not in any 
case surrendered as a slave? And might it 
not be well at the same time to provide by 
law for the enforcement of that clause in the 
Constitution which guarantees that "the 
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all 
privileges and immunities of citizens in the 
several States"? 

I take the official oath to-day with no men- 
tal reservations and with no purpose to con- 
strue the Constitution or laws by any hyper- 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 73 

— — ■ ^ — ■ — _^___^^^ 

critical rules; and while I do not choose now 
to specify particular acts of Congress as 
proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it 
will be much safer for all, both in official and 
private stations, to conform to and abide by 
all those acts which stand unrepealed than 
to violate any of them trusting to find im- 
punity in having them held to be unconsti- 
tutional. 

It is seventy-two years since the first in- 
auguration of a President under our Na- 
tional Constitution. During that period fif- 
teen different and greatly distinguished citi- 
zens have in succession administered the 
executive branch of the Government. They 
have conducted it through many perils, and 
generally with great success. Yet, with all 
this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the 
same task for the brief constitutional term of 
four years under great and peculiar diffi- 
culty. A disruption of the Federal Union, 
heretofore only menaced, is now formidably 
attempted. 

I hold that in contemplation of universal 
law and of the Constitution the Union of 
these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is im- 



74 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

plied, if not expressed, in the fundamental 
law of all national governments. It is safe 
to assert that no government proper ever had 
a provision in its organic law for its own ter- 
mination. Continue to execute all the ex- 
press provisions of our National Constitu- 
tion, and the Union will endure forever, it 
being impossible to destroy it except by 
some action not provided for in the instru- 
ment itself. 

Again : If the United States be not a gov- 
ernment proper, but an association of States 
in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a 
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than 
all the parties who made it? One party to a 
contract may violate it — break it, so to 
speak — but does it not require all to lawfully 
rescind it? 

Descending from these general principles, 
we find the proposition that in legal contem- 
plation the Union is perpetual confirmed by 
the history of the Union itself. The Union 
is much older than the Constitution. It was 
formed, in fact, by the Articles of Associa- 
tion in 1774. It was matured and continued 
by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 



FKST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 75 

It was further matured, and the faith of all 
the then thirteen States expressly plighted 
and engaged that it should be perpetual, by 
the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And 
finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects 
for ordaining and establishing the Constitu- 
tion was "to form a more perfect Union,'' 

But if destruction of the Union by one or 
by a part only of the States be lawfully pos- 
sible, the Union is less perfect than before 
the Constitution, having lost the vital ele- 
ment of perpetuity. 

It follows from these views that no State 
upon its own mere motion can lawfully get 
out of the Union; that resolves and ordi- 
nances to that effect are legally void, and that 
acts of violence within any State or States 
against the authority of the United States 
are insurrectionary or revolutionary, accord- 
ing to circumstances. 

I therefore consider that in view of the 
Constitution and the laws the Union is un- 
broken, and to the extent of my ability I shall 
take care, as the Constitution itself expressly 
enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union 
be faithfully executed in all the States. Do- 



76 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

ing this I deem to be only a simple duty on 
my part, and I shall perform it so far as prac- 
ticable unless my rightful masters, the 
American people, shall withhold the requis- 
ite means or in some authoritative manner 
direct the contrary. I trust this will not be 
regarded as a menace, but only as the de- 
clared purpose of the Union that it will con- 
stitutionally defend and maintain itself. 

In doing this there needs to be no blood- 
shed or violence, and there shall be none un- 
less it be forced upon the national authority. 
The power confided to me will be used to 
hold, occupy, and possess the property and 
places belonging to the Government and to 
collect the duties and imposts; but beyond 
what may be necessary for these objects, 
there will be no invasion, no using of force 
against or among the people anywhere. 
Where hostility to the United States in any 
interior locality shall be so great and uni- 
versal as to prevent competent resident citi- 
zens from holding the Federal offices, there 
will be no attempt to force obnoxious 
strangers among the people for that object. 
While the strict legal right may exist in the 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 77 

Government to enforce the exercise of these 
offices, the attempt to do so would be so ir- 
ritating and so nearly impracticable withal 
that I deem it better to forego for the time 
the uses of such offices. 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue 
to be furnished in all parts of the Union. 
So far as possible the people everywhere 
shall have that sense of perfect security 
which is most favorable to calm thought and 
reflection. The course here indicated will 
be followed unless current events and ex- 
perience shall show a modification or change 
to be proper, and in every case and exigency 
my best discretion will be exercised, accord- 
ing to circumstances actually existing and 
with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution 
of the national troubles and the restoration 
of fraternal sympathies and affections. 

That there are persons in one section or 
another who seek to destroy the Union at 
all events and are glad of any pretext to do 
it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there 
be such, I need address no word to them. 
To those, however, who really love the 
Union may I not speak? 



78 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

Before entering upon so grave a matter as 
the destruction of our national fabric, with 
all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, 
would it not be wise to ascertain precisely 
why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate 
a step while there is any possibility that any 
portion of the ills you fly from have no real 
existence? Will you, while the certain ills 
you fly to are greater than all the real ones 
you fly from, will you risk the commission of 
so fearful a mistake? 

All profess to be content in the Union if 
all constitutional rights can be maintained. 
Is it true, then, that any right plainly writ- 
ten in the Constitution has been denied? I 
think not. Happily, the human mind is so 
constituted that no party can reach to the 
audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of 
a single instance in which a plainly written 
provision of the Constitution has ever been 
denied. If by the mere force of numbers a 
majority should deprive a minority of any 
clearly written constitutional right, it might 
in a moral point of view justify revolution; 
certainly would if such right were a vital 
one. But such is not our case. All the vital 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 79 



rights of minorities and of individuals are 
so plainly assured to them by affirmations 
and negations, guaranties and prohibi- 
tions, in the Constitution that controversies 
never arise concerning them. But no or- 
ganic law can ever be framed with a pro- 
vision specifically applicable to every ques- 
tion which may occur in practical adminis- 
tration. No foresight can anticipate nor 
any document of reasonable length contain 
express provisions for all possible questions. 
Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by 
national or by State authority ? The Consti- 
tution does not expressly say. Matj Con- 
gress prohibit slavery in the Territories? 
The Constitution does not e^^pressly say. 
Must Congress protect slavery in the Terri- 
tories? The Constitution does not expressly 

say. . 

From questions of this class sprmg all our 
constitutional controversies, and we divide 
upon them into majorities and minorities. 
If the minority will not acquiesce, the ma- 
jority must, or the Government must cease. 
There is no other alternative, for continuing 
the Government is acquiescence on one side 



80 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

or the other. If a minority in such case will 
secede rather than acquiesce, they make a 
precedent which in turn will divide and ruin 
them, for a minority of their own will se- 
cede from them whenever a majority refuses 
to be controlled by such minority. For in- 
stance, why may not any portion of a new 
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily 
secede again, precisely as portions of the 
present Union now claim to secede from it? 
All who cherish disunion sentiments are 
now being educated to the exact temper of 
doing this. 

Is there such perfect identity of interests 
among the States to compose a new union 
as to produce harmony only and prevent re- 
newed secession? 

Plainly the central idea of secession is the 
essence of anarchy. A majority held in re- 
straint by constitutional checks and limita- 
tions, and always changing easily with de- 
liberate changes of popular opinions and 
sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a 
free people. Whoever rejects it does of ne- 
cessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Una- 
nimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 81 

as a permanent arrangement, is wholly in- 
admissible; so that, rejecting the majority 
principle, anarchy or despotism in some form 
is all that is left. 

I do not forget the position assumed by 
some that constitutional questions are to be 
decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I de- 
ny that such decisions must be binding in 
any case upon the parties to a suit as to the 
object of that suit, while they are also en- 
titled to very high respect and consideration 
in all parallel cases by all other departments 
of the Government. And while it is obvious- 
ly possible that such decision may be erron- 
eous in any given case, still the evil effect 
following it, being limited to that particular 
case, with the chance that it may be over- 
ruled and never become a precedent for 
other cases, can better be borne than could 
the evils of a different practice. At the same 
time, the candid citizen must confess that if 
the policy of the Government upon vital 
questions affecting the whole people is to be 
irrevocably fixed by decisions of t'he Su- 
preme Court, the instant they are made in 
ordinary litigation between parties in per- 
sonal actions the people will have ceased to 



82 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

be their own rulers, having to that extent 
practically resigned their Government into 
the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is 
there in this view any assault upon the court 
or the judges. It is a duty from which they 
may not shrink to decide cases properly 
brought before them, and it is no fault of 
theirs if others seek to turn their decisions 
to political purposes. 

One section of our country believes slav- 
ery is right and ought to be extended, while 
the other believes it is wrong and ought not 
to be extended. This is the only substan- 
tial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of 
the Constitution and the law for the supres- 
sion of the foreign slave trade are each as 
well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever 
be in a community where the moral sense 
of the people imperfectly supports the law 
itself. The great body of the people abide 
by the dry legal obligation in both cases, 
and a few break over in each. This, I think, 
can not be perfectly cured, and it would be 
worse in both cases after the separation of 
the sections than before. The foreign slave 
trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would 
be ultimately revived without restriction in 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 83 



one section, while fugitive slaves, now only 
partially surrendered, would not be surren- 
dered at all by the other. 

Physically speaking, we can not separate. 
We cannot remove our respective sections 
from each other nor build an impassable 
w^all between them. A husband and wife 
may be divorced and go out of the presence 
and beyond the reach of each other, but the 
different parts of our country cannot do this. 
They cannot but remain face to face, and in- 
tercourse, either amicable or hostile, must 
continue between them. Is it possible, then, 
to make that intercourse more advantageous 
or more satisfactory after separation than 
before? Can aliens make treaties easier than 
friends can make laws? Can treaties be more 
faithfully enforced between aliens than laws 
can among friends ? Suppose you go to war, 
you cannot fight always; and when, after 
much loss on both sides and no gain on 
either, you cease fighting, the identical old 
questions, as to terms of intercourse, are 
again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, be- 
longs to the people who inhabit it. When- 
ever they shall grow weary of the existing 



84 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

Government, they can exercise their consti- 
tutional right of amending it or their revolu- 
tionary right to dismember or overthrow it. 
I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many 
worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of 
having the National Constitution amended. 
While I make no recommendation of 
amendments, I fully recognize the rightful 
authority of the people over the whole sub- 
ject, to be exercised in either of the modes 
prescribed in the instrument itself; and I 
should, under existing circumstances, favor 
rather than oppose a fair opportunity being 
afforded the people to act upon it. I will 
venture to add that to me the convention 
mode seems preferable, in that it allows 
amendments to originate with the people 
themselves, instead of only permitting them 
to take or reject propositions originated by 
others, not especially chosen for the pur- 
pose, and which might not be precisely such 
as they would wish to either accept or refuse. 
I understand a proposed amendment to the 
Constitution — which amendment, however, 
I have not seen — has passed Congress, to the 
effect that the Federal Government shall 
never interfere with the domestic institu- 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 85 

tions of the States, including that of persons 
held to service. To avoid misconstruction 
of what I have said, I depart from my pur- 
pose not to speak of particular amendments 
so far as to say that, holding such a provision 
to now be implied constitutional law, I have 
no objection to its being made express and 
irrevocable. 

The Chief Magistrate derives all his au- 
thority from the people, and they have con- 
ferred none upon him to fix terms for the 
separation of the States. The people them- 
selves can do this also if they choose, but the 
Executive as such has nothing to do with 
it. His duty is to administer the present 
Government as it came to his hands and to 
transmit it unimpaired by him to his suc- 
cessor. 

Why should there not be a patient confi- 
dence in the ultimate justice of the people? 
Is there any better or equal hope in the 
world? In our present differences, is either 
party without faith of being in the right? 
If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His 
eternal truth and justice, be on your side of 
the North, or on yours of the South that 
truth and that justice will surely prevail by 



86 FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

the judgment of this great tribunal of the 
American people. 

By the frame of the Government under 
which we live this same people have wisely 
given their public servants but little power 
for mischief, and have with equal wisdom 
provided for the return of that little to their 
own hands at very short intervals. While 
the people retain their virtue and vigilance 
no Administration by any extreme of wick- 
edness or folly can very seriously injure the 
Government in the short space of four years. 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
and well upon this whole subject. Nothing 
valuable can be lost by taking time. If there 
be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste 
to a step which you would never take delib- 
erately, that object will be frustrated by tak- 
ing time; but no good object can be frus- 
trated by it. Such of you as are now dis- 
satisfied still have the old Constitution un- 
impaired, and, on the sensitive point, the 
laws of your own framing under it; while 
the new Administration will have no im- 
mediate power, if it would, to change either. 
If it were admitted that you who are dis- 
satisfied hold the right side in the dispute, 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 87 

there still is no single good reason for pre- 
cipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, 
Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him 
who has never yet forsaken this favored land 
are still competent to adjust in the best way 
all our present difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, is the momen- 
tous issue of civil war. The Government 
will not assail you. You can have no con- 
flict without being yourselves the aggres- 
sors. You have no oath registered in heaven 
to destroy the Government, while I shall 
have the most solemn one to "preserve, pro- 
tect, and defend it.'' 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
but friends. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained it must 
not break our bonds of affection. The mystic 
chords of memory, stretching from every 
battlefield and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, 
when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature. 

March 4, 1861. 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 

Fellow-Countrymen : At this second ap- 
pearing to take the oath of the Presidential 
office there is less occasion for an extended 
address than there was at the first. Then a 
statement somewhat in detail of a course to 
be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, 
at the expiration of four years, during whicn 
public declarations have been constantly 
called forth on every point and phase of the 
great contest which still absorbs the atten- 
tion and engrosses the energies of the na- 
tion, little that is new could be presented. 
The progress of our arms, upon which all 
else chiefly depends, is as well known to the 
public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reason- 
ably satisfactory and encouraging to all. 
With high hope for the future, no prediction 
in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this 
four years ago all thoughts were anxiously 
directed to an impending civil war. All 
dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the 
inaugural address was being delivered from 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 89 

this place, devoted altogether to saving the 
Union without war, insurgent agents were 
in the city seeking to destroy it without war 
— seeking to dissolve the Union and divide 
effects by negotiation. Both parties depre- 
cated war, but one of them would make war 
rather than let the nation survive, and the 
other would accept war rather than let it 
perish, and the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were 
colored slaves, not distributed generally 
over the Union, but localized in the southern 
part of it. These slaves constituted a pe- 
culiar and powerful interest. All knew that 
this interest was somehow the cause of the 
war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and ex- 
tend this interest was the object for which 
the insurgents would rend the Union even 
by war, while the Government claimed no 
right to do more than to restrict the terri- 
torial enlargement of it. Neither party ex- 
pected for the war the magnitude or the du- 
ration which it has already attained. Neither 
anticipated that the cause of ithe conflict 
might cease with or even before the conflict 
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier 



90 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
astounding. Both read the same Bible and 
pray to the same God, and each invokes His 
aid against the other. It may seem strange 
that any men should dare to ask a just God's 
assistance in wringing their bread from the 
sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge 
not, that we be not judged. The prayers of 
both could not be answered. That of neither 
has been answered fully. The Almighty has 
His own purposes. ''Woe unto the world 
because of offenses; for it must needs be 
that offenses come, but woe to that man by 
whom the offense cometh." If we shall sup- 
pose that American slavery is one of those 
offenses which, in the providence of God, 
must needs come, but which, having con- 
tinued through His appointed time, He now 
wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
North and South this terrible war as the woe 
due to those by whom the offense came, 
shall we discern therein any departure from 
those divine attributes which the believers 
in a living God always ascribe 'to Him? 
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
that this mighty scourge of war may speed- 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 91 

ily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it con- 
tinue until all the wealth piled by the bonds- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid 
by another drawn with the sword, as was 
said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
be said "the judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." 

With malice toward none, with charity 
for all, with firmness in the right as God 
gives us to see the right let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in, to bind up the na- 
tion's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle and for his widow and his 
orphan, to do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
selves and with all nations. 

March 4, 1865. 



PROCLAMATION. 

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

A PROCLAMATION. 

Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A. 
D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the 
President of the United States, containing, 
among other things, the following to-wit: 

That on the 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, all persons 
held as slaves within any State or designated part of 
a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion 
against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, 
and forever free; and the executive government of the 
United States, including the military and naval author- 
ity thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of 
such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such 
persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make 
for their actual freedom. 

That the Executive will, on the 1st day of January 
aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts 
of States, if any, in which people thereof, respectively, 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and 
the fact that any State or the people 'thereof shall on that 
day be in good faith represented in the Congress of 
the United States by members chosen thereto at elections 
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States 
shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong 
countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence 
that such State and the people thereof are not then in re- 
bellion against the United States. 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, 



I 



A PROCLAMATION 93 

President of the United States, by virtue of 
the power in me vested as Commander in 
Chief of the Army and Navy of the United 
States in time of actual armed rebellion 
against the authority and Government of 
the United States, and as a fit and necessary 
war measure for suppressing said rebellion, 
do, on this 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, 
and in accordance with my purpose so to do, 
publicly proclaimed for the full period of 
one hundred days from the day first above 
mentioned, order and designate as the States 
and parts of States wherein the people there- 
of, respectively, are this day in rebellion 
against the United States the following, to- 
wit: 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the 
parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jef- 
ferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, As- 
cension, Assumption, Terrebonne, La- 
fourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, 
including the city of New Orleans), Miss- 
issippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South 
Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia 
(except the forty-eight counties desig- 
nated as West Virginia, and also the coun- 



94 A PROCLAMATION 

ties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, 
Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and 
Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and 
Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are 
for the present left precisely as if this proc- 
lamation were not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and for the 
purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare 
that all persons held as slaves within said 
designated States and parts of States are 
and henceforward shall be free, and that 
the executive government of the United 
States, including the military and naval au- 
thorities thereof, will recognize and main- 
tain the freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so 
declared to be free to abstain from all vio- 
lence, unless in necessary self-defense; and 
I recommend to them that in all cases when 
allowed they labor faithfully for reasonable 
wages. 

And I further declare and make known 
that such persons of suitable condition will 
be received into the armed service of the 
United States to garrison forts, positions, 
stations, and other places and to man ves- 
sels of all sorts in said service. 



A PROCLAMATION 95 



And Upon this act, sincerely believed to 
be an act of justice, warranted by the Con- 
stitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
the considerate judgment of mankind and 
the gracious favor of Almighty God. 

In v^itness whereof I have hereunto set 
my hand and caused the seal of the United 
States to be affixed. 

Done at the city of Washington, 
this 1st day of January, A. D. 1863, 
(seal.) and of the Independence of the 
United States of America the eighty- 
seventh. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

By the President: 
William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 



LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. 

Four score and seven years ago our fath- 
ers brought forth upon this continent a new 
nation, conceived in Hberty, and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation, 
so conceived and so dedicated, can long en- 
dure. We are met on a great battlefield of 
that war. We are met to dedicate a portion 
of it as the final resting place of those who 
here gave their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 
we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate 
— we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow 
this ground. The brave men, living and 
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 



THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS 97 

it far above our power to add or detract. 
The world will little note, nor long remem- 
ber, what we say here, but it can never for- 
get what they did here. It is for us, the liv- 
ing, rather to be dedciated here to the un- 
finished work that they have thus far so 
nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us, — that from these honored dead 
we take increased devotion to the cause for 
which they gave the last full measure of de- 
votion, — that we here highly resolve that 
the dead shall not have died in vain; that the 
nation shall, under God, have a new birth 
of freedom, and that the government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 



The above is the standard and authentic text made four 
days after its delivery, by Mr. Lincoln, to be placed with 
records of the Gettysburg Cemetery Association. 



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